1. WHAT DO THE BLIND SEE WHEN THEY DREAM? 3On Perception, Dreams, and the Creation of the External World
Filling in the Gaps . . . The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of . . . Down the Rabbit Hole . . . A Vision for the Sightless . . . Luke Skywalker Lives in Your Temporal Lobe . . . A Corridor of Sound . . . The Dream Machine

2. CAN ZOMBIES DRIVE TO WORK? 38On Habit, Self-Control, and the Possibility of Human Automatism
Zombies Among Us . . . Vision Without Seeing . . . Mice in a Plus-Maze . . . Focusing by Being Unfocused . . . How to Identify a Fake Smile . . . Why We Forget to Pick Up a Gallon of Milk . . . Why Do We Eat When We’re Not Hungry? . . . Executive Dysfunction . . . Murder on Autopilot . . . Two Systems for Multitasking

4. CAN WE REMEMBER THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED? 99On Memory, Emotion, and the Egocentric Brain
A Web of Snapshots . . . The Brains of Rival Sports Fans . . . Why Do We Remember Where We Were on 9/11? . . . Brains in Midtown and Downtown . . . Ignorance Is Bliss . . . “It’s Not a Lie If You Believe It” . . . Fairy Tales in the Confabulating Brain

By the end of the nineteenth century, the question of working-class education in Britain was hardly a novelty, however controversial it remained. The principle of universal, publicly supported elementary schooling for children had been established in law for the greater part of a generation. Adults had been served by the Mechanics’ Institutes since the 1820s, while the Woking Men’s Colleges sponsored a liberal arts curriculum from the mid-century onwards. Yet it was now that the topic caught fire in the imaginative fields of the English novel, in two stories of working-class educational aspiration that furnished the occasions for general assessments of the current state and prospects of culture. In doing so, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and E.M. Forster’s Howards End pioneered a new genre, the condition of culture novel.’ p.15

Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that with the collapse of Communism the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism is more timely and important than ever. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining the concept’s relation to capitalism. Wide-ranging study of Marxism and democracy, covering history from ancient Greece to the US Constitution, and thinkers from Weber to Thompson. More accessible than most writing in the field; Will appeal to historians, philosophers and sociologists as well as political theorists

5. Between Debt and the Devil : Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance by Adair Turner

Lord Turner argues that countries facing the predicament of onerous debts, low interest rates, and slow growth should consider a radical but alluringly simple option: create more money and hand it out to people. “A government could, for instance, pay $1000 to all citizens by electronic transfer to their commercial bank deposit accounts,” Turner writes. People could spend the money as they saw fit: on food, clothes, household goods, vacations, drinking binges—anything they liked. Demand across the economy would get a boost, Turner notes, “and the extent of that stimulus would be broadly proportional to the value of new money created.”

6. What is to Be Done: A Dialogue on Communism, Capitalism, and the Future of Democracy by Alain Badiou & Marcel Gauchet

Foreword: The Future of an Alternative, by Martin Duru and Martin Legros
1. The encounter with communism
2. From Marx to Lenin
3. Totalitarianism
4. The return of the communist hypothesis?
5. What is the meaning of the crisis?
6. The end of imperial logic, or the continuation?
7. The deconstruction of capitalism
8. Why we re not finished with politics
Conclusion: In search of a lost deal?

7. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts By Stanislas Dehaene

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GMail StatBits

* Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.
* Solitude is independence
* Call no man happy until he is dead - Oedipus
* It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. - Oscar Wilde
* The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. - Oscar Wilde